The Rowhammer effect was known for multiple decades but only got widespread attention around 6 years ago when its security implications were observed for the first time. In this talk, we will discuss various attacks and mitigations that have appeared in a cat-and-mouse game over the past years. However, on recent off-the-shelf systems the Rowhammer effect is still relevant. We will discuss why the Rowhammer effect is not yet successfully mitigated and still will not be when academic mitigations reach practice. Finally, we will show what the fundamental misunderstandings in our community are that lead to the repeated revival of the Rowhammer effect.

Daniel Gruss (@lavados) is an Assistant Professor at Graz University of Technology and will be one of the presenters at DEEP .tech track. He finished his PhD with distinction in less than three years. He has been involved in teaching operating system undergraduate courses since 2010. Daniel's research focuses on side channels and security on the hardware-software boundary. His research team was involved in several vulnerability disclosures, including Meltdown and Spectre. He has co-authored more than 20 top-tier academic publications in the past five years and received several prizes for his research.